1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image forming system, an image forming apparatus, a computer, and a computer readable recording medium stored with a control program.
2. Description of Related Art
An image forming apparatus is typically controlled by grasping the operating status of the image forming apparatus by means of acquiring the status information (error notifications and job completion notifications) as it is informed by the image forming apparatus via a network (e.g., Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. H08-221234).
However, while it is now normal to have an access control device (e.g., firewall) in a network for the sake of security enhancement, it creates problems such that, under a security environment where a connection to an image forming apparatus from a computer forming apparatus is normally accepted but a connection to a computer from an image forming apparatus is denied, a job transmission from a computer is done without problems but a transmission of status information from an image forming apparatus fails, thus making it difficult to control the image forming apparatus and may delay a necessary response in such a case as an error occurred. On the other hand, although it is possible to modify the configuration of the access control device to allow the connection from the image forming apparatus, it is difficult to maintain a secure environment.